You’ve Been Thunderstruck! Math Game

If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know how much I use games in my classroom to reinforce the lessons I teach. I love games, and the kids LOVE games.

For one of my stations I made last week, I made a game that I was inspired by on Pinterest. Click here to see the inspiration for this game. That game was for very young students, so I modified it to work for my students. The great thing about it, is that you can use it for almost any skill. I used it for adding integers. Here is a picture of the whole game itself.

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of craft sticks. I also bought blue, orange, and black paint pens. I first tried to paint the ends with the paint pens, but then decided that it took too long so I went and bought some acrylic paint and sponge brushes (much, much faster). I did still use the orange and black paint pens though. I painted one-half of one side of twenty-six craft sticks blue, and I painted four of them orange. I then wrote “Thunderstruck” on the orange sticks and I wrote different adding integer expressions on the blue ones. I also put a “point value” on each stick.

Students were placed in pairs. One student pulls a stick out of the cup. Both students find the value of the expression. If the student who pulls out the stick answers correctly, that student receives the number of points that I had written on the stick. The other student then pulls out a stick, and does the same thing. If a student pulls out the orange “Thunderstruck” stick, that person loses all of the points they have accumulated at that time.

You could actually play this several different ways. You could have students keep the sticks out of the cup as they pulled them and the game would end when they had pulled all of the sticks or you could have them replace the sticks and work until you called time.

My students LOVED this game. Where did I get the name and colors for this game you might ask? Well I’m from Oklahoma, and if you’re an Okie……you’re an OKC Thunder fan!!

Because these took so much time to make, I only made five sets of them. I made three different games; Thunderstruck, Go Fish, and Whack-a-Mole. They played each game for about fifteen-twenty minutes, and then rotated stations.

Here are the other two games that my students played that day. They are for sale here on my blog, or on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.